The Best Of Us
by too much in the sun
Summary: "You're not him. You can't be him." Frank Fontaine has taken Atlas, and Jack sets out to rescue him. Alternate ending to the game.
1. Chapter 1

Sterne's Waterproof Matches aren't, and the matchsticks themselves are some kind of flimsy cardboard rather than solid wood. The last one in the book rips in half as he attempts to strike it, and he lets the whole sad, soggy mess drop to the floor, cigarette still dangling unlit from his lips.

It's not like he's the one who bought the damn things, anyway - fished the half-full book out of a dead man's pocket this morning, so it's not his money going to waste. Didn't look like the poor sod was going to be having much use for them anyway. He didn't buy the pack of NicoTimes either, though those he found on top of an ashtray, not on a corpse.

Capitalism was Andrew Ryan's God, the God of the city he created, and yet he hasn't bought anything honest john in - weeks, maybe. Not as if there's many places left open to buy from except the damn vending machines, though.

Now that he thinks about it, he's not sure what's keeping him here, really. He came to Rapture in the first place because it sounded far and away better than staying topside, and there was little on dry land for him to justify staying.

Down here, under six miles of seawater, anything seemed possible.

The radio on the desk before him crackles, transmitting faint sounds from Arcadia: the splash of water in the canals, the calling of songbirds, the footsteps of the man from the bathysphere on the dying grass.

He smiles to himself, a bitter twist of sarcasm on his lips - yes, there's a reason he's staying. To kill Andrew Ryan.

Even after Ryan's dead, the only way out of Rapture might be the muzzle of a gun. He's been working on a way to hack one of the remaining bathyspheres, but not seriously - he's not getting out of here alive anyway. The world doesn't hold much appeal to him anymore - like Andrew Ryan, he intends to go down with his city.

He's no great shakes with hacking - he can manage a security camera or two, but the monitor he's sitting in front of is his highest achievement. He has yet to see his accomplice from topside on it, but it's helped him getting the jump on splicers looking for ADAM more than once.

The footsteps on the radio have stopped, and though he listens for any sound of an enemy, whether a splicer's voice or the thump of a Big Daddy's footsteps, he doesn't hear a thing.

_Why's he stopped_?

He tries to think of what the man could be looking at and comes up blank - until he remembers the posters. Not as if they're easy to forget - some as big as bedsheets, printed in garish colors and cheap ink with the image of some he-man who never was, asking WHO IS ATLAS?

He presses down the call button and speaks.

"You might hear things about me" - from Ryan, mostly, and he's heard Tenenbaum on the shortwave too - "see my name about." On every wall in Arcadia. There's not a corner in the place without his idealized visage scowling down at it. His fingers twitch and he bites down on the filter of his cigarette. He'd just about kill for a light - should've spliced Incinerate while he had the chance. "Think what you will. There was a time when I cared about politics, but it's just an excuse men use to kill one another."

His brow furrows as he stares at the monitor. What he wouldn't give to talk to another human being, to walk free somewhere not fathoms under the Atlantic - to think of himself as a man for a moment, not the monster Rapture's made of him.

"I'm done with all that," he says, and the soggy paper splits under his teeth, spilling tobacco onto his tongue.

God help him, even the tobacco tastes like the sea.

"I just want to see the sunlight again," he says.

No answer.

He lets the call button come up and forces himself to smile at his own foolishness. Whoever he is, the man he's been guiding through Rapture doesn't seem very talkative, to say the least. He hasn't said a single word so far.

He shakes his head, drops the remains of his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray on the desk. Silent or not, whoever it is he's talking to seems plenty agreeable: despite his silence, he's been doing as asked so far, and he isn't dead yet.

That part's a little baffling - the fellow's tangled with more than a few Big Daddies in his time down here, but the big apes don't even seem to give him pause. Sometimes there's a groan of pain between the gunshots and explosions, but never any indication of a really serious injury.

As long as the man stays alive, though, he doesn't really care what trouble he gets in. The problem would be if he got himself killed - with him dead, Atlas would have no way to get to Ryan.

It'd be nice to hear a human voice once in a while. Just to know that it's a man on the other end of the radio, not some helpful phantom. He's grateful for the help and all, but it's been too long since he's had a real conversation with someone.

That might have something to do with the fact that, so far as he knows, he's the only person in the neighborhood sane enough to _have_ a conversation. Two weeks ago he intercepted a transmission from someone who sounded reasonably sane, but he's heard nothing since then, not counting Andrew Fucking Ryan's intermittent radio broadcasts, or poor old Johnny.

He cocks his head to the side, slowly lowering the radio to the desk. He could swear he heard footsteps in the hall a moment ago, but there's no sound of a triggered alarm, and no ranting from a splicer looking for ADAM.

Barring some sort of quiet splicer (and none of the ones he's seen around are quiet; it's like silence scares them or something), it's got to be someone sane.

Someone looking for him.

He glances to the security monitor. Not a peep. Everything is as he left it, so far as he can see.

Rapture must be making him crazy.

He hears a step outside and closes his eyes for a moment in weariness. As if the day hasn't been bad enough already.

He eases the desk drawer open and draws out the revolver he keeps tucked there in case something gets past his cameras, checks that it's still loaded.

His system is humming with EVE - thanks to his cameras and steady aim, he hasn't had to rely on plasmids for defense in a while, and the unused EVE coils in his blood. He raises his hand, concentrating, and watches electricity bloom across his skin in blue currents.

He doesn't like the risk of getting a monkey on his back from the stuff, but what he told the man from topside is true - there's nothing like a fistful of lightning. Many's the time a jolt of the stuff has saved him from death. If ADAM and EVE are curses, they're useful ones.

He flexes his fingers, resigning himself to the task at hand, and stands up, hooking the gun from the desk with the fingers of his other hand as he does.

The door opens for him, and he takes a cautious step forward, scanning the hall. To the left, empty, lit by flickering lightbulbs.

To the right, a ghost in a shabby suit, one hand gripping a section of pipe.

The ghost grins when he falters. "Hello, Atlas."

His palms have gone sweaty, and he holds the gun tighter, pressing his fingers into the grip. "Frank Fontaine is dead."

"Not anymore I ain't," the ghost sneers, tapping the pipe against its palm. "I wanna cut a deal with ya, Mack."

"I don't make any deals with dead men," says Atlas. First he's seeing ghosts, now he's talking to them. Ah, Rapture. "Am I supposed to just take your word that you're him?"

"That's the general idea," the ghost says, grinning. "Howsabout you let me into your little office here and we have ourselves a discussion?" He taps the pipe against his palm, grin like a mask on his face. "Whaddaya say?"

Atlas looks him over. He looks solid enough, and the smirk is the same one he remembers seeing on Fontaine's ugly mug back when he worked for the man. Not a ghost, probably, and if he's a splicer he's a civil one, since he hasn't yet cold-cocked Atlas to work him over for ADAM.

"Fine," says Atlas. He has the advantage, anyway - a gun and a blast of electricity versus a lead pipe isn't much of a contest.

He steps back into the office and leans casually on the desk, thinking sourly of other meetings with men in similarly shabby suits, always asking for him to help. As if wanting to help save a city from itself somehow gave him the power to solve a thousand problems at once.

Fontaine, or Fontaine's ghost, or whoever he's just invited in, swaggers inside like he owns the place and Atlas just doesn't know it yet. He looks the place over with an insolent smirk, as if to say that as hideouts go this one is piss-poor. Which is fair enough, since this isn't someplace he'd exactly have chosen to hide if he had his way.

Atlas drums his fingers on the desk, the hum of electricity the only sound in the still air. (Over the radio he can just hear the trickle of water and the breathing of the man from topside.) "So what kind of deal are you looking to make?"

"We both want Andrew Ryan dead - right, dollface?" Fontaine spreads his hands in a gesture made much less amiable by the pipe he's still hanging onto and the expression of sneering disdain on his face.

"Right," says Atlas.

"Well, whaddaya gonna do after that?"

Atlas tugs on the brim of his flat cap. "I don't know," he admits. He hasn't thought about that - with no Andrew Ryan to fight against, and his city in ruins, he won't have a purpose to guide him.

The only thing he can think of is sending his silent chum back home - after all he's done for Atlas, it's the least he can do by way of thanks. _He_ doesn't seem to have any trouble operating the bathyspheres, or any of the other machines in Rapture, so Atlas doesn't suspect there'll be much problem packing him into a hacked 'sphere and sending him back to dry land. It'd be a shame for him to be trapped down here - not his fault his plane crashed where it did.

Fontaine looks at him like he suspects Atlas of having a few screws loose, maybe more than a few. "I heard that bathysphere come down a couple days ago, and since then you ain't done nothing but talk to whatever dumb sonuvabitch came out of it. Who is he?"

"I don't know," Atlas says. "He never told me."

"He never told you, huh? Sure he didn't." Fontaine snorts derisively. "Come on, kid. If you're gonna lie to me, you're gonna have to try a little harder." He taps the pipe against his palm. "Who is he?"

"I don't know," he says, curling his fingers into a loose fist and relaxing them. "I wouldn't know him if I saw him."

Fontaine taps the pipe against his palm again, harder this time with a meaty smack of metal on skin, and Atlas furrows his brow. "What, does he owe you money?"

Fontaine grins, showing off that perfect Steinman smile - if his poise was spoiled, the crack in it has been filled in now. "Not exactly. I know you've been using him, whoever he is, as a tool to get to Ryan, so what I'm asking you is: what are you gonna do with him once Ryan's dead?"

Atlas shrugs, flexes the tingling fingers of his left hand. "I thought I'd fix up a bathysphere and send him back where he came from." He does wish he could muster a better thanks for the man he's been dragging through hell, but a ticket topside is the best he can do. It's funny - he can energize a city to the point of civil war, but he can't get one man back above sea level.

Fontaine chuckles - not quite laughing in his face, but much the same feeling's behind it. "I'm afraid that won't be happening, _boyo_." That smirk is back on his face again as he pats the radio on the desk with his free hand. "This cohort of yours was my business partner first, and I intend to keep him that way. He's mine, bought and paid for, and _I_ decide what happens to him after I'm done with him."

Apparently being dead does a number on the mind. Atlas keeps his mouth shut and his thumb near the hammer of his pistol. However sane he is or isn't, Fontaine's a fair sight more pleasant than a splicer screaming for blood.

Fontaine pats Atlas's cheek in the same gesture he used with the radio - Atlas jerks away from him. The con man's smirk only widens.

"I think we can come to a deal, you and me," he continues, "seeing as both of us want to get rid of Andrew Ryan. Here's what I'm thinking." He points back to the radio. "You keep talkin' to him. Once Ryan is dead, he's mine."

"What's in it for me?"

Fontaine shrugs. "I let you live. That sound good to you, dollface?"

"Fine." He doesn't understand what Fontaine is getting at, but he'll go along for the time being - sounds harmless enough. Inasmuch as any Fontaine scheme is _harmless_.

"That's just jake, mister boghopper. But I got one more question for you." Fontaine lifts the pipe, taps it against the side of Atlas's head.

"Then ask it, Fontaine."

"Are you gonna go easy, or are you gonna make it hard for me?" The Steinman smile is perfect and straight still, shining white without a hint of nicotine yellow. Strange, for a man who's been dead a year and a half to have such good teeth.

"What?" Atlas shakes his head. "No, of course not." You make things hard for Fontaine, and Fontaine sees to it that you end up in a salt pond.

Fontaine raises his eyebrows. "Can't say I didn't warn you."

He taps the end of the pipe against the side of Atlas's head one more time, and then there's a rush of air, a spray of bright light, and Atlas is down for the count.


	2. Chapter 2

two

Arcadia is quiet, but he still glances around out of reflex before he sinks down onto the bench for a breather. Rapture's changing him - back home he wouldn't think twice before sitting on a park bench.

This isn't home, though; despite the bird calls and grass underfoot, the air still smells a little like salt, and the light's too dim, strange and shimmery like light reflecting off a pond, or shining off a piece of metal.

He digs a pep bar from his pocket, unwraps it and begins to eat. He hasn't slept since he got into the lighthouse; he'd just dozed off when the plane went down, and he's been on his feet since then. Getting some food in his stomach is helping him feel a little more human, though.

He'd like nothing better than to sleep right now, even just a catnap in a crawlspace smelling of mulch and rot, but he doesn't want to risk it, not given Andrew Ryan's threats and the slightly bitter taste he's beginning to detect in each lungful of air. He'll get this formula all cooked up and _then_ he'll sleep, but not until then.

Atlas is silent, offering him no further guidance; the last advice he gave was to try the Farmer's Market. That's next on his list, as soon as he finds more of this solution Langford mentioned in her audio diary. He's found a few bottles in the hiding places of the Saturnine, enshrined on crude tables or atop steamer trunks, and a few more in the pockets of the Houdini splicers he's been ambushed by.

Splicers, hell. Those were human beings he cut down, even if it was in self-defense. He's been trying to rationalize his actions to himself, but he keeps returning to the same terrible conclusion: no matter how violent they are, no matter if they strike out at him first, they're still human, and their blood is on his hands.

Literally so. He's been washing whenever he can just to keep the blood from his hands, but it's grimed deep under his nails and into the creases of his skin, deeper than he can scrub off with his bare hands. Even if he could, his sweater is splashed with it too - there's even blood in his _hair_. He must smell like a slaughterhouse.

He counts the vials of solution he's already collected, checking that they haven't broken inside his stolen briefcase. He has five, and needs two more. Which means he has to hunt down and kill two more people.

He puts his head in his hands, suddenly craving a cigarette or a stiff drink or, oh God, to wake from this nightmare on the tarmac with a pretty stewardess shaking his shoulder.

The Big Daddies don't bother him so much - they're not _human_, just big brutish things with deep wailing calls like moans of animal pain. Maybe they're robots, or some ADAM-enhanced sea creature. When he kills them it's like putting down a sick animal, or at least he can pretend it is.

The splicers, though - they're as human as he is. They may be drug addicts, and some are hideously deformed, but at heart they're only people. Some of Dad's war buddies came back with worse scars, worse addictions.

Like the Little Sisters, the splicers are human beings - humans twisted by ADAM.

He straightens up, looking out into the little glen past skeletons of trees. There's no time to sit and fret over moral conundrums. He has to keep moving, or he'll be stuck down here forever - _if_ he survives Ryan's mad gambit.

He steps out onto the path, checking left and right for splicers. He doesn't see anyone, and the dead, foggy air betrays no sounds of footsteps.

He sallies forth with cautious steps, following the neon signs whose lights shine dimly through the green murk. He passes by the doors to the Grotto and then stops, confused. He's been here before - Rolling Hills is straight ahead, the Arcadia Glens to his left, and something called the Tree Farm to the right, the only place of the three he hasn't been yet. There are no more signs pointing the way to the Farmer's Market, which leaves his choice of path up to him.

If only Atlas would say something, offer him some suggestion on which way to go. He's got enough common sense of his own to get where he needs to eventually, but a little help would be nice.

Whatever Atlas's thoughts on the matter might be, it seems the Tree Farm is the place he needs to go.

He wrinkles his face up. When he was sitting in his little glen and thinking, it was almost like being at home again. Somewhere with trees, where the sky's full of clouds instead of fish.

There's a woman wandering aimlessly near a big steel water tank, with a beeping, whistling security bot hovering close by. She spots him almost instantly and starts firing away with her handbag-sized pistol. Her shots don't meet their target, but they come too close for comfort.

"Clean it up! Clean it up!" she shouts, and he winces, aiming for the bot with a blast of electricity. His hands fly over its valves for a moment after it drops to the ground by his feet, then snap the cover back over its primitive electronic brain. He's getting used to this hacking thing.

The bot jumps back into the air with a whistle and begins returning fire on its former mistress. He would laugh at the way he thinks about it – like it's some kind of person – but this is _Rapture_. Even the machines aren't what they seem to be.

He can hear her screaming as the bot pursues her, but he won't let himself shudder. It's too rough down here to stop and feel.

It's her life or his, and she won't ever get better. Killing her is a kindness, really.

Atlas told him so.

He pries open a storage crate and rifles through it – a few machine gun rounds, some lint, and a dead spider. Leaning against the crate is an audio diary, and he hits play to drown out the gunfire.

The voice on the diary is Missus Langford's, talking about getting oxygen from the trees. He shouldn't be surprised to hear her voice – it seems like she almost ran Arcadia single-handedly – but he did just watch her die not too long ago.

He looks up. The sound of screaming and gunshots is almost inaudible now; the bot's chased the woman out of the Tree Farm towards the entrance to the Tea Gardens.

Something catches his attention, a familiar shape at the corner of his eye.

There's a storage crate above him, tilted on one of the wide wooden beams that form the wall.

_What's that doing there?_

He moves forward past the water tank, shoes crunching in the dead leaves, until he reaches a stack of wooden pallets against a little half-wall that seems to serve no purpose. He hops up onto the pallets, then hoists himself up from there onto a shelf-like little terrace. The air tastes worse up here, closer to the air vents that Ryan's pumping his poison gas through, and he coughs, wiping his mouth on his dirty sweater sleeve.

He walks along the beam, uses Telekinesis to pull a hypo of EVE to him. Heaves himself up again, wedging the toes of his scuffed shoes between the wooden beams. It's like this place was made for climbing.

He pulls himself up, then shinnies forward along the beam to the crate. He inches around it so it'll be between any potential attacker and him, then pops the latches.

This one's got electric gel and an autohack tool inside; he busies himself tucking them away, then wipes his brow with the back of his hand. He's fit enough, but it's getting hard to breathe down here. Maybe just a minute - a minute can't hurt anything, and anyway he'd have the jump on anyone that tried to get him up here.

He leans back against the stone wall, and its chill begins to leach through his sweater right away. He misses the sunlight, the warmth of the familiar world above the waves. Rapture feels like a grey spring day dragging on and on, all cold and wet and close. He wants _out_.

The radio's still silent - Atlas has never gone so long without checking on him before.

_Atlas, where are you_?

* * *

He's awake - awake and there's a needle in his arm.

His body screams with bruises and his head pounds, but he forces himself to keep calm and analyze the situation. He didn't win a war with Ryan (if you call it winning) by acting on first reactions.

The situation is a gush of cold liquid up his arm, and a dark chuckling laugh from above him as the needle is withdrawn.

"Wake up, Sleepin' Beauty."

Frank Fontaine.

He's almost disappointed.

"You may be wonderin' why I didn't just leave you for dead," Fontaine drawls, the rough edges of that Bronx accent smoothed over by something. Drink? Drugs, perhaps? "But in case you haven't noticed there's not a whole lot of people down here willin' to lend me a hand. So I thought maybe I'd give you one more chance."

It's almost insulting, the way he's laying this out - it's a classic strategy, one Atlas knows well. Get the target on your side by saying you were going to kick him to the curb, but something changed your mind, and he'll be eating out of your hand trying to keep in your favor.

Atlas opens his eyes - well, eye, since one is swollen almost shut. He's propped on a couch in a study - probably Fontaine's, but he doesn't remember ever visiting the man's apartment and can't be sure. Fontaine is standing in front of him, hands behind his back, grinning.

"I think I'll take it, Fontaine," says Atlas.

If Fontaine's surprised, he hides it well. "I thought so. You ain't so dumb, Seamus - I always knew you was a smart kid."

He feels a hot spike of panic in his stomach - _how do you know that name_. "What did you call me?"

"I called you by your right name, you dumb mick." Fontaine smirks. "What, did you think I'd forgotten you? Seamus Kelly, the most useful pain in the ass I ever had."

Fontaine looks at him for a moment, then laughs. "You worried I'm gonna - reveal your secret identity? Who am I gonna reveal it to?"

He does have a point there - most of the people who followed Atlas are dead now, as are most of the people who knew him as Seamus Kelly. And dead men don't make the best informants in the first place.

With his family dead, it's not like keeping his name secret will make much difference anyway.

He looks at Fontaine steadily. Don't back down. Never back down.

Fontaine flashes a real smile instead of a smirk or a wolfish grin, steps toward the little wet bar at the other end of the room. "How about we celebrate our workin' together with a little drink, Mister Kelly? What's it been since you started down here, ten years?"

If he has the dates correctly, it's not quite eleven years. Time is a little slippery down here. "That sounds about right," he says.

Fontaine nods, retrieving two mismatched glasses from cabinets under the shelves of liquor, then pouring whiskey into the both of them. "You was a good partner," he reminisces. "Clever. I worked with some real goons in my time, but you actually got a set of brains in that head of yours."

He eyes the level of whiskey in the glasses, then takes a sip from one before coming back to hand the other to Atlas. His damn shoes are perfectly polished, the white saddle immaculate, not even a shadow of water damage or bloodstain.

Atlas eyes the shelves of liquor at the bar. He's probably going to need some help to deal with Fontaine for however long the man keeps him around.

He accepts the glass of whiskey. Knowing Fontaine, he's already got a plan together. Hopefully it'll be one not too likely to get Atlas killed.

"So, what's our first step?"

_And what the hell kind of drugs were you giving me?_


	3. Chapter 3

three

Arcadia is too much like home. All the trees and the grass under his boots are dead, and the air is cold and wet, but if he closes his eyes he can pretend it's fall in Overlook... except for the bitter chemical smell of the poison gas, anyway.

He coughs into his sleeve, then lights a cigarette with a touch of his finger. They can't be real tobacco, not down here, but at least they taste better than Luckies. Lucky Strike means fine tobacco, sure.

He kicks his feet up on the counter and looks out past the twisted oak growing in the middle of this little square. He _should_ be sitting over under the second-level walk where he could keep his eye on every door, instead of sitting here with his back to two, but he feels pretty confident he can keep a handle on things from here. A man deserves a rest once in a while, especially after putting down a Big Daddy - he needs to catch his breath before he goes looking for the winery and beehives.

It was funny with the Little Sister, though - once she was cured she looked just like the Donoghue's little girl Cindy, down to the Shirley Temple curls.

It couldn't be her, he reasoned - there were lots of towheaded little girls in the world, probably hundreds even down here in Rapture. He'd sure been surprised, though, when he saw what looked like the happy girl he knew cowering in the wake of that metal... thing.

He rubs the skin of his forearm - the Daddy clipped him with a rivet right before it went down, and although he ran to one of those healing stations with the IV bag right after, the skin still feels tight and itchy. It looks normal, so maybe it's just in his head, but it still _hurts_.

He sighs, scratches his head with a grimy hand. He's got to get a move on before he chokes to death down here.

It shouldn't take him too much longer to cook up the vector - he scrounged more of the solution off of the body of a man who got caught by a turret, so there's that taken care of. And how hard can it really be to find _water_ in Rapture? The bee stuff might be a problem, but the 'apiary' place will probably have it.

"-just do what I'm told! I always just do what I'm told!"

He tenses up at the shout - it sounds like someone his age, and it almost sounds sane - then makes himself relax as he gets to his feet. This is Rapture, after all. It's just another splicer. Has to be.

He hears the thump of a rocket turret firing, and then a scream.

He forces himself forward. He's got to keep going, even though he's hungry and tired and lonely (and scared, but as if he would admit that).

The hungry part he might be able to fix - some of the salami at Paddon Meats smelled OK. Maybe he'll have some when he's done here.

Oh, boy. If his mom could see him now. He grins sheepishly. She wouldn't even let him go out for hamburgers with the other boys, said they were made from rotten meat, that you couldn't trust ground beef or chain restaurant food and hamburgers were both. She'd smack him silly if she saw him here, contemplating eating old sausage off the floor.

A splash of red catching his eye and he looks left. The poster's unfamiliar - "Fontaine's Helping Hands" in yellow at the top, with a man and a little girl standing in a pair of giant hands, each holding signs. "Fontaine's Home for the Poor" says the man's sign, and the little girl's says "Little Sister's Orphanage". Funny name for an orphanage down here, but it probably came before the actual Sisters.

He's heard advertisements for the place on the radio, though. "Give your little girl the life she deserves" and all that. It's a nice idea, but he's not sure it really fits what he's seen of this city - everything he's seen so far was established by someone just looking to get theirs.

He'll ask Atlas about it, he guesses. He'll know. After he gets to Andrew Ryan and they meet up, he has a lot of questions to ask, but he's sure Atlas won't really mind. He's answered Jack's other questions so far, often before he could even ask them.

Atlas is a swell guy all around, it seems - and Jack can't wait to meet him.

He trudges up the steps, weighed down by his sweater muddy with blood and thick denims soaked in seawater, listening for splicers. The Farmer's Market is almost weirdly quiet; he's used to hearing someone muttering constantly in the background, and the absence of raving is odd.

There are two doors here he hasn't gone through yet; one is labeled Employees Only and the other has no sign. Not that it really matters which he takes.

He steps through the unlabeled door, turns to pass a vending machine, looks up, and smiles. At the end of the hall is a friendly, glowing neon sign for the winery - and above it, one for the Silverwing Apiary that sports a logo of a buzzing bee.

It looks like the path is set out before him. He reloads his pistol and goes forward.

There's a broken wine bottle by the door going out, and he wrinkles his nose; it smells like vinegar. Just when he thought he was getting used to the smells of Rapture, too.

The tunnel beyond splits into two, and he's faced with a choice. He pauses. The bee place is closer, he decides. He'll go there first.

* * *

Atlas rubs at the needle mark on his arm, smearing half-clotted blood over his palm in an attempt to relieve the soreness - not like it'll make him much dirtier than he already is.

Fontaine cracks a smile, rests one ankle on the opposite knee. "That's the last of my private stash I put in ya, kid. So don't go runnin' off or anything - I wanna see a return on that investment. With the current state of things down here, I ain't gonna be getting more any time soon."

With Fontaine, the 'stash' he's referring to could be damn well anything; the man's got a reputation for being a well-controlled junky. Atlas guesses some kind of stimulant drug. Not ADAM, though - he's familiar with the feel of a dose of ADAM, and that wasn't it. ADAM is hot, and whatever Fontaine gave him was cold.

He musters a small smile without teeth. "Thanks. I... appreciate it."

"Aww, don't take it too hard, Seamus," Fontaine says, waving it off with a casual motion of his hand. "Now let's talk business a minute."

He nods silently; Fontaine plucks a half-smoked cigar from one pocket of his jacket, and gives him a look he can't quite interpret.

Atlas is silent. Reading Frank Fontaine is a dangerous business and a cheap ticket to the hereafter.

"Got a light?" Fontaine prompts.

Atlas furrows his brow and begins to pat his pockets. There's the possibility he might have a book somewhere; since things started really going to shit around last fall, he's gotten into the habit of squirreling things away on his person. Moira hated it.

He finds a lighter deep in the pocket of his trousers that sounds like it has some fluid left, and offers it to Fontaine, who accepts it with a nod.

"We gotta get you Incinerate, my friend," Fontaine grumbles as he lights up. "Still using a lighter in this day and age. At least you ain't using matches."

If Fontaine doesn't stop talking Atlas might have to ask _him_ for a cigarette - his search uncovered none, though he could've sworn there were four left in the pack of NicoTimes.

Fontaine lets the lighter flame die and sets it on the table, taking a deep pull on his cigar. "That's better. So. Business, huh? I got some errands I could send you on."

"I thought I was more than just an errand boy to you," Atlas says, making a guess at what Fontaine will respond to.

"Not yet you ain't." Fontaine snorts, smirking around the cigar. "You gotta prove yourself to me. Remember, Mister Kelly, we haven't worked together in a while. I don't know if I can trust you yet."

Fair enough. Atlas nods. "What do you need me to do then, Mister Fontaine?"

He takes another drag, seems to mull it over. "There's some people in Rapture I want you to, uh, get rid of. I don't need 'em dead if you don't want. But I want 'em out of my way. I give you materials, access to security, you give me evidence that you do the job. Deal?"

"What's in it for me?" He can't let Fontaine just push him around like this. He rebels at the thought.

Fontaine raises his eyebrows. "Well," he drawls, "have you heard of a thing called the Vita-Chamber?"

"I have," he says - well, he's seen the placards around Rapture, and a few of the strange machines scattered here and there, but God knows what they actually _do._

"You know what it does?"

"No."

"Well, neither did I until I stole the plans for it." Fontaine chuckles, tickled by his own words. "I ain't a scientist by any means, but the long and the short of it is it brings dead people back to life."

"Does it?" His tongue feels numb and his head hurts.

"Near as I can tell. It was only programmed for Ryan when they put it out, but it ain't exactly rocket science to put in someone else's genetic code. They were gonna sell memberships to this thing, see, and the front end of it had to be someone any dumb blonde receptionist could use." There's a dark, strangely mischievous glint in Fontaine's eyes, and he blows out a cloud of smoke seemingly just for the effect, looking through it at Atlas with those humorless dark eyes. "If you take care of my business I figure it'll take me about ten seconds to bring back your Moira. Maybe little Patrick too if you're good at your work."

"I'll do it." It's cruel to taunt him this way, but cruel is part of Fontaine's own genetic makeup, near as Atlas can figure. (And he misses them - his anger and sorrow for them is part of why he wants Ryan dead so fiercely, why he'd sell his soul to pay the man back an eye for an eye.)

"Sure?" Fontaine looks like he's asking an actual question, as if Atlas has the option to turn him down. This town's not about options, but actions.

"What the fuck do you think?" He can feel a red blush of anger starting to rise in his cheeks. "Of course I'm sure."

Fontaine raises his hands in surrender. "I'm just asking, Mack. I wanna be sure you're not gonna crawfish on me halfway through."

"Not if you promise me my family back." (There's something around Fontaine's eyes that Atlas does not recognize - that no one still alive would recognize. It's a little bit fear, and a little bit surprise, which are not usually emotions people live long after seeing on Frank Fontaine's face.)

"Deal," he says, puffing out a cloud of cigar smoke like the screen of ink a squid lays down to hide itself. He reaches out to shake Atlas's hand, and for the first time Atlas almost feels he's dealing with someone on his level, not a giant of Rapture. There's a possibility he may just have taken Frank Fontaine down a peg.

"Who do you want dead?" he says, spotting a pack of Oxford Clubs on the far end of the table. He leans to pull them towards him. They're not his usual brand - he likes Parliaments or Marlboros, or used to - but they'll do fine. He's good at making do.

"I didn't say dead," Fontaine says, with a hint of human warmth in his voice. "I said I need them out of my way."

"Dead's a pretty easy way to ensure that," Atlas mutters, reclaiming his lighter and lighting up. He's used to cheap cigs in Rapture and topside, and Oxford Clubs aren't. He takes a moment to savor the first drag. Maybe he'll try and weasel a cigarette allowance out of Fontaine while he's arguing.

"Right." Fontaine nods, pleased like a cat with a bowl of cream in front of him. "Well, our mutual acquaintance is on his way to take care of Ryan as we speak, and I want you to keep tabs on him, check in every once in a while. Make sure he ain't wandering too far from the path. That's your first job."

Fontaine takes a drag on his cigar. He's like the other con men Atlas has known - once he got off the streets he took to what the pictures told him was upper-class life, and he took with a vengeance. Including cigars.

"Your second job, since Ryan is taken care of, is dealin' with some other people who've been getting on my nerves lately. You heard of Sofia Lamb?"

"Can't say I have," Atlas says, eyes half-closed. He can't imagine they're real tobacco - growing food in Arcadia was the priority, not smokables - but they taste like it. Like _good_ tobacco.

"Good. She's a two-bit headshrink that thinks she's got an idea what Utopia is. And it ain't every man for himself like Ryan thinks." Fontaine leans forward. "Nah, Doc Lamb thinks happiness is all about servin' other people and the 'common good'. If she was just a harmless quack I'd let her go. Keeps the people quiet while I go through their pockets for change. But she's poisoning the ADAM supply, and I can't have her doing that, which is why I want her taken out."

Atlas nods, takes a drag off his smoke. "What's she doing to the ADAM?"

Fontaine's nostrils flare slightly and his eyebrows draw downward. "See, that's what's got me riled. _I don't know._ But I got people in deep in her little cult that tell me she's planning something weird. I want it stopped before she gets any further."

If Lamb is fucking around with ADAM, she's also fucking around with EVE - and while Atlas doesn't intend to splice any more than he already has, he'll need EVE to use the plasmids he's got. Whatever the hell she thinks she's doing, it affects him as well as the whole of Rapture - which means he actually almost gives a damn.

"Where is she and how do I get there?"

Fontaine flashes a grin and tosses a set of keys that seem to have just appeared in his hand to Atlas. "She's holed up in Fontaine Futuristics with Gil Alexander. These'll get you onto the train at Ryan Amusements, but to get there you're gonna have to make your way through the Museum. I got some guys who're gonna take you there in a mini-sub, but after that you're on your own. There's maps all over the place. I promise ya won't get lost."

Atlas stows the keys in his trouser pocket.

Fontaine stubs out his cigar and tucks the stub back into his pocket; oh, how the mighty have fallen. (Atlas does the same with his cigarette without a hint of shame or irony - he's been doing it since he started smoking. He tucks the rest of the tin into his pocket as well. They should hold up fine to whatever he runs up again.)

"So you're up for the job?"

With the promise of his family returned to him, Fontaine has Atlas by the balls, and he doesn't care. Rapture doesn't matter to him anymore - he's too old to play revolutionary. If he can get Moira and Patrick back, he's going straight topside. He still has family in New York - hell, he could probably go back to Ireland if need pressed him to. Anywhere but here.

"I am."

Fontaine's smile this time is slow and a little crooked. "Good. Now let's get you armed before I let you go."

"Lead on," Atlas says softly. (He's already thinking of what he'd like to do once he's back topside. He'll take Patrick to a real park, let him play in sunlight under the sky. He'll take Moira to a diner and get her a chocolate shake, real chocolate instead of the chemical they call by the name down here.)

"This way." Fontaine gets up, and Atlas follows him like a lamb up the stairs. Instead of turning right towards the study, Fontaine turns left, towards what has to be his bedroom - or another study, given this is Frank Fontaine.

It's a bedroom, the bed perfectly made with covers that look decadently soft thrown overtop, a fireplace crackling in the center. Fontaine breezes on by to another door, and by God - it's another study.

Atlas allows himself a small smile and steps back as Fontaine moves toward the back wall and frowns at it, hesitating. He mutters something under his voice, then digs out a pocket knife and begins to pry at the edge of one of the boards.

The board pops free with a creak, revealing a keypad into which Fontaine promptly enters a number, whistling a melody Atlas doesn't recognize at first - and then, with a wince, remembers. He's whistling "Danny Boy".

The wall slides aside, revealing a steel-lined closet which is also lined with guns of all sorts. Atlas can't help but be appreciative - he was a few years too young to serve when the war ended, but he grew up with a respect and a love for guns. Machine guns, pistols, revolvers - even a collapsible grenade launcher that looks a little like it's made of coffee cans. And stacks of ammunition, each neatly ordered in labeled crates.

Fontaine looks at the collection fondly for a moment, then leans forward and begins scooping ammunition up, starting with what looks like several of the round magazines of a machine gun all stuck together. He looks at it critically, weighs it in his hand, loads it into a gun he takes one-handed from its rack on the wall.

"Tommy gun," he says. "That's antipersonnel ammunition I loaded in. Five shots and you can turn a man into ground meat. I'll give you two more magazines. They ain't hard to find in this town."

Atlas accepts the gun, turns it over in his hands as Fontaine turns back to the closet. It's a nice weapon, though the magazine is definitely jerry-rigged like so much in Rapture. He sets it down on the desk carefully.

Fontaine's still whistling as he picks up what looks like a pistol with the mumps - the magazine has been grossly extended beyond its normal confines to hold three, maybe four times the normal amount of bullets. He checks it, loads it with ammunition from a crate he doesn't look at as he dips his hand into it, and hands it to Atlas.

"Also antipersonnel," he says. "Pistol rounds is a dime a dozen down here, so I ain't givin' you any extra of those."

Fontaine cracks open another crate and starts rummaging, coming up with a bare-bones shoulder holster which is tangled in itself. His whistling shifts to humming as he unties the knots, then back once it's all sorted out.

He stands. "Come here," he says, holding the holster up to Atlas and squinting.

"All right."

Atlas steps forward, and Fontaine puts the holster in his hands. "Put it on like a shirt. This part should be on your left."

Atlas struggles into the thing as Fontaine watches intensely.

"Good. Now put the pistol in it."

Atlas fights it for a moment - _I will not lose a fight with a piece of fabric in front of this man_. The pistol either hangs twisted or won't stay in.

Fontaine sighs and steps towards him. He grabs the pistol and shoves it into the holster (which must have been tailor-made for something so strange-looking), then yanks on it to make sure it hangs straight.

"You're lucky you got me," he grumbles, "or you'd still be out there with a six-shooter and your bare hands."

Once he's satisfied he steps back and turns again to the closet as Atlas wonders what on earth is going on in that man's head.

Fontaine's hand pauses over the grenade launcher, then moves on to a shotgun that looks surprisingly normal. He loads it, moves to hand it to Atlas, then takes his hand back.

"Turn around," he says, and Atlas does so. He fiddles with the holster, then slides the shotgun into the back of it, where it hangs so neatly Atlas guesses that the holster is designed for it.

"Turn back," Fontaine orders, and Atlas turns on his heel.

"I hung your shotgun over your right shoulder," Fontaine says. "Gave you a full load so that's forty-eight shots before you're out. Again, it ain't like ammo for a shotgun is exactly hard to find down here."

He steps back and assesses Atlas with a critical eye - for a moment Atlas wishes he could've had the man as a lieutenant while he was fighting Ryan. The man he had was good enough, but having Frank Fontaine on your side down here is like having America at your back topside.

"All right," Fontaine decides. "That's enough. Fontaine Futuristics has been pretty dead since Ryan gave me my runnin' shoes and took the place, and it ain't like an amusement park is gonna give you much trouble either. I'll give ya some pin money for if you run out of bullets shootin' at ghosts, though."

Fontaine bends and rummages through the closet again, turning up a lockbox that he pops open - full of cash, naturally. He counts out bills and shoves them at Atlas. "That's a grand. Should tide you over until you make it back here."

He stands, kicks the crates back from the edge of the closet, and presses a switch that slides the door closed. He turns to face Atlas and frowns. "I feel like I'm forgettin' something."

He brushes past Atlas and throws open the drawers, then brings out something metal the size of a deck of cards with a dial on the front. He fiddles for a moment, then nods and thrusts it into Atlas's hand.

"What's this?"

"Radio. Tuned to the service frequency so our mutual acquaintance should be able to hear you just fine - but so will anyone else with one of these."

Atlas hears footsteps in the hall, and his hand moves to the butt of the pistol after a second's hesitation.

Fontaine chuckles. "Don't worry. Nothing gets into my roost that I don't want in it. That's your two bodyguards to the minisub. Come in, boys."

The door to the bedroom opens, and Atlas tenses in reflex. The men on the other side could turn him into pulp without breaking a sweat, he wagers. He's got a shot or two of Electrobolt left before he needs another dose of EVE, enough to stun them and put a bullet through their heads...

"Terry and Joe," Fontaine says, indicating each one as he says their names. They look exactly the same to Atlas; tall, identifiably American, rough hands, stout. "Take care of him, boys. It's rough out there today."

The two step away from each other and Atlas focuses on what he has to do - minisub, amusement park, train - laying it out in his mind as a plan to follow.

Fontaine raises his hand as Atlas turns to go. "One last thing."

He pauses.

"Don't run off. I'll know. And if you don't get caught by a splicer lookin' for ADAM, you're gonna wish you did once I catch up with you." His smile is sunny and warm; he slaps Atlas on the shoulder as if they're old pals. "Good luck. You're gonna need it."

* * *

Note: Many thanks to the following for reviewing - Rae, DragonSteel, Sean M. Cogan, Emalee Roze, kkid, Docteur, SarahIntheSky, and LuffyMarra. Input is always appreciated.

This fic is based on a prompt from the Bioshock kink meme, but due to anon-posting issues I was unable to post it there - even with anon-posting untroubled, this fic is a little long for LJ comments.

That said, I hope you're enjoying this little adventure, and I assure you there's much more to come.

Next time: bees and creepy animatronics!

(Further note 16 April 2012: fixed some typos.)


	4. Chapter 4

four

The ocean pours by outside the windows of the minisub, nearly lightless and freezing cold. Here and there are lights from hunting anglerfish, and in the distance the Atlantic Express track glimmers, safety lights reflecting off the steel.

They're taking the long way to the Museum. They could go straight through the city, but for some reason they're sweeping around the outskirts instead. Keeping to the shadows, though a minisub is small enough to fall through the cracks in citywide security - plenty of law-abiding citizens used to own minisubs before the war got started.

This route provides an excellent view of the city, though; the cool sunlit green of Arcadia, the glowing red of Hephaestus... the shifting light, barely visible past the glare of city lights, of the trench beneath Persephone.

Arcadia. He'll have to get in contact with his man from topside soon, make sure he's making progress on the formula. If he stays locked in the gardens, he'll have no way to get to Hephaestus and Ryan. And the entire city will begin losing air, but compared to getting rid of Ryan that's a relatively small concern.

He taps his fingers restlessly against the edge of the bench. One of Fontaine's big lugs is staring him down from across the tiny passenger compartment; the other one's up in the cockpit steering the damn thing.

The whole bit makes him want a smoke, but he's really got to cut down. Topside there's no Steinman to cut you open and renew your lungs with a good slathering of ADAM, and it's not like Steinman's been much use down here either of late. Poor fellow indulged in his own surgical supplies a little too much.

Neon signs shimmer past the windows as the sub curves in closer to the buildings. They're nearing the Museum; Atlas can see the Ryan Amusements building not too far off. He doesn't remember the Museum having had a 'sphere dock, so he expects the minisub will be slipping in through the back door, so to speak.

The Museum is located near the boundary of the city, close by a collection of vents which used to be something of a tourist attraction. In his own early days in Rapture Atlas worked on a few low-level maintenance job, and the Museum's back door was a common exit point from which to repair other buildings in the area. Usually they'd had to wait until the off hours to sneak out there, as the man who owned and operated the Museum didn't much care for anyone who wasn't him using his private exit, which happened to include a dock for his minisub.

Convenient, that.

As far as Atlas knows, the fellow is long dead. If he hadn't left the Museum to the sea slugs after what happened at Ryan Amusements, he certainly had at some point during the war. There are lights on inside, illuminating slowly-falling sediment in the water, but they're dim and flickering.

Whichever one of the goons was at the console has begun docking maneuvers, and the sub begins to turn past the front façade of the Museum towards the back of the building. In Rapture there are no streets, no avenues, and any building could potentially be viewed from any angle - that had fueled some of the architecture, as Atlas understood it, the need to have a good-looking construction from every point of view. The Museum had been built in a time when minisubs were a rare commodity, and designed to have its best view be from the Atlantic Express as the train slowed into the station.

But now the building seems to loom out of darkness, to huddle beneath miles of ocean, feeble lights carving out a small space from the cold water.

Eventually those lights will fail, he thinks; no one is left to fix them. Big Daddies aren't smart enough to manage electrical engineering while protecting a little girl. They can replace lightbulbs, but not much more.

The city is still at war with itself, so far as he knows; the fire he lit continues to blaze, though some districts are still mostly untouched. They won't survive long. Rapture was made to be interdependent, like any other city. It could survive without Pauper's Drop, without Siren Alley - Rapture could spare a few of its districts as sacrifice. But too much of the city is ravaged by splicing and war for it to survive long.

The sub's engines roar as it slows to a stop in the docking bay; Terry or Joe, whoever's in the cockpit, enters the key sequence that tells the bay someone's at home. The door to the ocean rolls shut and the sub bobs up into the bubble of air trapped at the top.

The hatch pops open. Atlas rises to his feet.

Neither of Fontaine's goons make a move; they watch him silently with eyes unreadable as fishes'.

The air in the docking bay is stale as he comes up into it from the sub, stale and cool with the faint scent of inorganic decay. Which is a fair sight more pleasant than the organic decay that perfumes most of the other districts of Rapture, at least.

The floor is dark, heavy basalt, sparkling with chips of mica and rough under his bootsoles. Most likely it was quarried from one of the nearby ridges and transported here for foundation - less expensive than shipping stone from the surface would've been, but ostentatious all the same. No one but the owner saw this bay on a regular basis; the glitter of the stone was reserved for him alone.

Andrew Ryan would approve.

The sub's hatch slips shut with a clang, and it sinks away beneath the surface of the water, leaving him here alone, the drip of water and his breathing the only sound in the cavernous space.

Rapture didn't _need_ an art museum. Cohen had his little displays in Fort Frolic - between him and the sculptures, paintings, and _displays_ scattered throughout the city, there was more than enough art in Rapture without a museum.

The funny thing was that Walter Carr's museum had existed anyway, and at the same time as Dionysus Park, which at least held the appeal of a lunatic asylum to distract from the pretentious works of its resident artists.

Atlas snorts, feels around in his pockets, and lights a cigarette with relish. The air here is stale-tasting, dusty with a faint saltiness to it, and the smoke will disguise it before he really starts thinking about the miles of dead water hanging overhead. It used to be easier to not think about the particulars of Rapture; even a month or two ago he used to be able to at least organize a scouting party for supplies, to focus his nervous energy into something productive.

Now Rapture is beginning to self-cannibalize. The people he would once have worked with on whatever small project needed doing have either been murdered or worse. Some are surely splicers by now. Most are probably dead somewhere in the halls.

And once again, Atlas stands alone in the city, no army of willing hands to help him. Just him, alone among the bodies.

The door wheezes open in front of him and he steps from the bay into Carr's private office. The place is untouched, a fact which spooks him more than finding it booby-trapped would. Not even the splicers have come here, rummaging through bookshelves in search of another hit or something to sell for one. It looks like Carr just left for the night; there's even a coat hanging on the coatrack.

Atlas keeps moving. He can't let himself get sidetracked here, before he even really gets started.

The door out of the office moans and a puff of dead air washes over his face. His assumption seems to be correct - the museum may have stood empty since Carr closed it in the first tremors of the war. It outlasted Dionysus Park, but not by much.

The halls are silent, marble floors blurred by a thin layer of dust; the plaque on Carr's door is brassy with neglect. No one's been by to polish it in a long, long time.

Strictly speaking the marble isn't marble either. It's some sort of chemical compound, compressed and treated to suck heat from the skin like the genuine article, to glitter austerely like a rich woman's jewels. That's Rapture for you - thousands of hours spent on making fake marble for floors.

He taps his boot heel against it as he stands, watches, listens for potential danger. It may not be real marble, but it's heavy enough to fool the poor fellows who have to lay it - he laid down some of the flooring in Athena's Glory in his own sweaty manual-laborer days.

His ears, unaugmented though they are, detect no nearby dangers, and his memory of the floor plan, coordinated with his knowledge of the layout of this neighborhood, tells him that as the fish swims it's a fairly straight shot from here to Ryan Amusements. Whether or not the walking path will be as easy remains to be seen, but if his first impression holds true, it shouldn't be too bad. And if it is - Fontaine sent him off loaded for bear. So long as he doesn't piss off any Big Daddies on his way, he ought to be set.

Atlas checks his loadout - full up on EVE, little bit of ADAM, plenty of money, more ammunition than any one man should need - and reckons it good. He stamps his feet a couple of times to shake out the cold (well-preserved though Carr's museum is, it's not heated anymore) and sets off.

Next stop, Ryan Amusements.

* * *

Jack gasps and collapses in the corner where the counter meets the wall. He's bleeding and nearly out of ammunition for the machine gun, but he has just enough of the bee... stuff... to make the vector. It had better be worth it, given what he's gone through just to get the ingredients.

He swipes matted strands of hair from his forehead and breathes out hard when the movement makes something yank and pull in his chest, a twinge of pain shooting down his arm. The nearest health station is... back across the bridge in the Farmer's Market, as far as he can recall. He still has a few health kits left, but he'd rather save them for later - Ryan knows he's here, and will no doubt try to ambush him at some point.

He sucks in a lungful of acrid air. There's a chance that there'll be a health station in the winery, with morphine and bandages and a vial of the blood-red tonic that makes skin and muscle grow back before his eyes, pink and new without scars knotting across his farm-tanned skin. It won't fix the rips in his sweater and shredded denim of his jeans, but that doesn't really matter.

So. The winery, and water - four more of the little glass bottles with the faded labels, and then he'll have everything he needs for the vector. It feels almost like he's making progress.

He forces himself to his feet, using the wall as a support and pressing the palm of his hand to the hole in his sweater where a splicer actually managed to get a bullet into him. It's not bleeding heavily enough to make him worry, and the residual morphine from the health kits he's used in the past days keeps the pain from being too distracting, but still, there's a bullet lodged inside him. The health station won't be able to extract it, but it should be able to at least grow back the ruined tissue around it. And people can live with bullets inside of them - his great-grandfather caught a bullet at Antietam and lived to be 91, and lots of Dad's war buddies still carry shrapnel.

He slots another drum magazine into the machine gun and creeps out into the corridor, where water drips from a poorly-mended crack in the round ceiling. Jack steps around the puddle, mindful of all the times he's used the Electrobolt to execute someone standing in water, usually before they even heard him coming. Wouldn't want to be caught by one of his own tricks.

The door to the winery opens, and a puff of rotten air hits him in the face. Two fresh corpses on the floor, blood-splattered masks covering their faces, their clothes, fashionable ten years ago, stiff and purple-brown with dried blood. The woman's been nearly gutted, her dress slashed open and intestines hanging out on the fabric that was once white. And they _smell_, like they were left somewhere hot instead of here in the wet and cold.

He brings his elbow up to his face, tries to muffle the smell with the fabric of his sweater as he stumbles blindly over them, nearly smashing into the wall as he does. He's been managing all right with all the other corpses, but oh, God, he was not expecting _that._ Splicers appearing from nowhere, an angry Big Daddy, Atlas, Andrew Ryan himself - anything but fresh bodies, fresh, _reeking_ bodies.

The worst part is that they're fresh. It's not the smell - he's smelled worse before, cleaning up a rabbit that one of the dogs got in the August heat - it's that they're _fresh_, and that they didn't kill each other. Because that means that someone else in Rapture, someone here in the winery, is leaving bodies in his wake today.

And, of course, they could be right around the corner. With his luck they _will_ be.

He sights a health station just ahead as he inches forward, and grits his teeth. There's a faint whirring sound just at the edge of hearing, the whir that usually heralds a security camera. He's been hearing it since he staggered out of the bee-place, so it can't be. But if it _is_ a camera, he'll have to move fast to get out of its view - he's nearly out of EVE, so there's no chance of shocking and hacking it.

Well, standing here like an idiot isn't going to get him anywhere.

He leans forward around the corner, just past the edge of the wall - and drops to the ground, landing hard on his palms, the shock jarring his insides and forcing a whoosh of air from his lungs. Rapture has sharpened his reflexes.

The security camera is high on the wall, and there should be a blind spot under it where he can stand to hack it.

The problem with that is that, about six feet beyond it, there's a turret too, crouching in defense of something he didn't get a good glimpse of: goldish, relatively small, maybe a safe? Doesn't matter; the turret is the important part.

Jack bites down hard on his lip, thinking. If he had any grenades left he could jump out just long enough to toss one, then roll back behind the wall for cover from the explosion. But he used his last grenade on a Big Daddy near the butcher shop, and even if he had more he might not be able to make the roll in time before it went off. And what if it didn't scratch the turret, or set off the security camera, or...

He clamps his hand hard against his side; the clot forming under the shreds of sweater and undershirt is still tacky, and blood seeps out warm through his fingers. As much as he knows he _could_ stay here thinking for a while, the air isn't getting any fresher and the bullet isn't going to take itself out of his side.

A thin tenor voice oozes out of the loudspeakers: _blues, twentieth century blues, you're getting me down..._

He half-expects to hear Atlas's voice crackle sharp and impatient from the radio: _get a move on_! But in the hours since the submarine he's been nearly silent.

Jack respects that. Makes sense he'd clam up, after seeing his wife and child blown to smithereens before his eyes. All the same it'd be mighty helpful if he'd whisper a few words of guidance, or, while he's wishing, disable the turret.

Or, hell, just say something to tell him what he's doing is stupid.

He clenches the fingers of his left hand into a tight fist, relaxes them; if a splicer jumps him after he rolls around the corner, he'll have to count on the camera to spot them, because both his hands are pretty much full.

He sucks in a deep breath (and the residual adrenaline and ADAM in his system attenuates the scream from his ribs to a whisper), ducks down low, and scurries around the corner.

Under the camera he's out of its field of view, and looses a quick bolt to still the turret before it can turn to fire on him. He briefly considers hacking it, and decides with a swing of the wrench that it's not really worth it.

He puts his hands up to the camera, carefully pries away the plate that guards its innards, and disconnects all the right wires to make it friendly to him rather than Ryan. Which is less mechanical skill and more prayer with a tiny dose of electricity, the last gasp of Electrobolt from the syringe of EVE he shot up crouched behind the counter at the cheese shop.

The camera beeps and he relaxes against the wall for a moment before forcing himself up again, staggering to the health station. He slips the needle into a vein, bracing himself against the machine as cool medicine flows into him.

Jack tastes salt on his lips, and allows himself a moment of rest.

* * *

Note: Again, many thanks to everyone who has reviewed and otherwise expressed support. I've been busier than usual with classwork in the year since I last updated, and I apologize for that.

This chapter was unusually tough to write, but the next shouldn't take nearly so long.

Thank you for reading!


	5. Chapter 5

five

The loudspeakers are still working.

_Some of these days, you miss me honey,_ Anna Culpepper croons from the grave. _Some of these days, you're gonna be so lonely..._

Atlas peers around a corner; the music keeps him from hearing any approaching footsteps. As much as they staved off the panic of feeling yourself trapped down here during peacetime, the loudspeakers only seem to be a liability now.

Not that he anticipates facing anyone else in the dead museum - the dust is unstirred by any footprints but his, and in between songs the silence is deep and cold. Given the museum was closed up in the first weeks of the war, there's probably no bodies to attract Sisters either.

So the halls are quiet, his breathing and his own footsteps the only sounds that echo off the chemical marble of the floors, bounce off the faux granite of the walls, the canvas of the faded paintings.

The museum's fairly small, but it feels labyrinthine as he creeps through it to Ryan Amusements and the train station. Something about the silence makes it feel much larger than it is. Makes him suddenly aware of the weight of the ocean overhead.

He slips under a barricade between exhibits; the velvet ropes are crumbly with rot, and most of the "art" looks just as bad. Paint peels off the canvases as he passes them, falling to the floor like the dead leaves of Arcadia.

Fontaine grins from around the corner and he freezes for a moment before his brain catches up to his eyes. He steps forward, cautiously.

Seen full-on rather than out of the corner of his eye, the apparition resolves into just another faded painting rather than a pursuing ghost. Even in flaking paint and dim light, the resemblance is strong - the eyes look _alive_ under the layer of grime, shining with animal cunning and rough humor.

The other two subjects - a woman with a mass of dark curls and a towheaded boy with a grave face - are upstaged by the mere fact of Fontaine's presence.

And they look familiar. Atlas frowns and peers a little closer at them, seeking some distinguishing mark that will give away their identities. Unlike Fontaine, they don't seem to look back at him as he stares, but they _do_ look like people he's seen before, if only in passing.

A name floats to the surface of his mind - _Brigid_, he mouths, looking pensively at the woman who stands at Fontaine's elbow. Why did he know her?

Why doesn't he remember her?

A mighty clang rings through the museum's halls and he starts, then presses himself against the wall, listening for any sign of movement. Electricity crackles at his fingertips - whether it's one man or ten that come for him, he has more than enough EVE to throw them thrashing to the floor. If there happened to be water on that floor, he wouldn't even need bullets to get them out of his way permanently.

No other noise follows, and he reduces the flow of lightning to sparks dancing over his skin, and the consequent drain of his EVE reserves to a dribble instead of a stream. If someone got the jump on him it would still be enough to render them dizzy, and that's all he would need.

After another moment he creeps forward along the wall, alert for any sound at all, any feeling of movement in the air.

The energy in his system, EVE and adrenaline mingled, shrieks along his nerves, singing in his blood. He doubts that whatever he finds - if he finds anything in these silent, dusty halls - will be more than one or maybe two splicers driven to the very edge of the city by addiction, seeking a new place to scavenge, new victims for their anger. The cocktail of chemicals in his system demands the same of him, in some ways.

Once, Atlas hated violence, preferred a handshake to a fist when it came to making a deal. Rapture promised something different: the New York waterfront ran with blood, and he wanted an out, one that, as it turned out, came in the form of a man who called himself Frank Fontaine. A little legwork and a few greased palms later (and oh, the grease came dear, living hand-to-mouth by the docks), and there he was, tracking Fontaine to his latest hidey-hole. Following him.

And for a while, Rapture _was_ different - more vicious and honest in its capitalism, but for all that at least straightforward in its cruelties. Atlas did well for himself; the fact that he had followed Fontaine down from the surface gave him a head start in the search for a job and money.

Fontaine didn't want him down here at first, though, Atlas reminds himself: at first he regarded the Irish lad scrabbling at his heels as a nuisance, but for whatever reason he warmed to the man who had pursued him from the surface. Maybe he was impressed by the obvious persistence, or maybe he'd just found better people to hold in contempt.

Either way, while he didn't exactly pour out the milk of human kindness for the man who would become Atlas, Fontaine had softened a little. Offered him a job at the fishery. Looking back, he'd probably been the one to direct Atlas towards the malcontents and misfits, showing him the crack in the carapace of Ryan's dream. He'd all but put the tools in his hands, now that he thinks about it.

At the time, it didn't feel like he was being played. That's not the way Fontaine works. He's about as subtle as a punch to the jaw, but he has enough charm to smooth things over until he's done with whatever con he needs you for. So whether or not Fontaine had him wrapped around his little finger, everything Atlas did at the time felt like his own idea.

Rather poisonous, having that kind of control over a man, or making him think you did. Not very true to the spirit of Rapture, the kind of tactic that the topside gangsters would recognize as old, but effective -

A shotgun booms three times in close succession, and Atlas freezes, the blood roaring in his ears. There's nothing _there_, no splicer babbling, no sound of footsteps. Surely he would have heard it if there was another person in here with him?

The only answer is the clink-clink-clink of someone reloading.

He curls his hand into a fist, electricity snapping over the knuckles webbed with scabs. No time to sit here second-guessing himself.

He inches around the corner, ready to make the first move - and finds the business end of a shotgun leveled at his face.

"Now, sport, would you care to tell me what you're doing down here?" his assailant inquires. "Because I'd sure hate to have to put you down, even if you don't _look_ like a splicer."

Atlas is momentarily speechless, the silver tongue that bought him an army stilled; it seems today is a banner day for running into Rapture's former notables. For all the war hasn't treated him well - the thin moustache has dissolved into a rough mess of stubble, and his hair is just as scraggly as Atlas's - Augustus Sinclair is still immediately recognizable.

"Trying to get to the train station," Atlas says, forcing the words through a throat suddenly tight and dry.

Sinclair frowns. "Now, why would you want to do that, son? You planning on going somewhere?" His voice is smooth, cultured, courteous, nothing like Fontaine's dockside-rough drawl, but it has the same undercurrent of malice coiling just below the surface.

Stories about him used to fly around the docks, eddying around your ankles, a dirty puddle of I-heard-that and did-you-hear that stuck in the ear. I heard Sinclair's got this desk in his office, this big desk the size of my whole apartment, and it's made out of this wood from a forest he owns topside, somewhere in South America. Had it smuggled down, just because he could. (The same reasoning behind _I heard that_ Fontaine's got this big bear in his office, this big dead bear stuffed behind his desk so you see it right when you come in: _because he could._)

_Did you know that,_ Atlas thinks sickly, _Sinclair had a guy pushed out an airlock because he fucked up when they were building the Sinclair Deluxe? It's true, he was just this regular mook like me and you, but one fuckup at the wrong time and it's curtains._

Bullets, however, are the great equalizer - if Sinclair makes a move, Atlas can have _him_ out an airlock sooner than you can say "Jack Robinson".

"I'm looking for Sofia Lamb," he says, for once honestly.

Sinclair smiles this little grin, showing off white teeth that Steinman had no hand in straightening (one of the incisors crooks and snaggles forward over another, and way in the back there's the gleam of a gold crown). "Why, how's that for a coincidence? So am I."

* * *

As far as hideouts go, Sinclair's isn't nearly as impressive as Fontaine's was - no bar, no henchmen, no stuffed bear behind the desk.

But then, Sinclair didn't have the luxury of a year and a half incognito to stock his little rathole. According to the hints he dropped on the way back through the museum, he only holed up here once things had well and truly degenerated - before that he was on the run through Athena's Glory and the rest of the residential district.

It makes sense, really, Atlas supposes - very few people expected that the war would last as long as it has. They expected a few days of rioting, quickly quashed by Ryan's men, and after that a return to normalcy.

Instead the city cannibalized itself. The lights aren't going out yet, but the radio channels that used to crackle with life are dead, and there is no one sane in the halls anymore. Business has stopped. The support structures struggle onward, but none of the maintenance workers are around to manage them.

And Andrew Ryan seems to have stopped caring.

Sinclair looks a little worse for wear, but overall not bad for a rich man; he's lost most of the excess weight that made him Fatass in the lingo the rebels used, but there's nothing desperate in his eyes, no disbelief that he's been reduced to squatting in a train station.

Atlas watches him as he shifts uncomfortably in his make-do chair (the seat from one of the ride cars at Ryan Amusements, it looks like). He has the advantage, but where Fontaine sprawled in his hideout, Sinclair looks tensed up, as if he's expecting something terrible to come through the door at any moment.

It doesn't really make sense, his nervous bearing. He has a bank of security monitors to warn him and a steel door between him and the train station proper. This area of town isn't exactly hopping with splicers, especially compared to what used to be the residential districts.

You might say it's a ghost town.

Sinclair's not exactly making a huge proposition here: what he asks is relatively simple. The train car rusting on its tracks just outside is in good enough condition that all it really needs is a jump-start.

This is where his problem is. Sinclair never spliced - "I didn't much fancy mixing business with pleasure", he said with a little smirk - and with no safe way into the amusement park and to its small stock of plasmids, he's stuck here. There are worse places to be stuck, but he _was_ on his way to see Lamb when he ended up here.

"Have you heard from her?" Atlas interrupts. His radio was a little worse for wear after a brief tour of duty as a cudgel, so it's well within possibility that somebody else has been broadcasting all this time. And while he knew little enough about Lamb - some sort of religion racket, not the sort of woman who would cross paths with a dock-worker and sometime revolutionary terribly often - well, the enemy of his enemy is his friend, and Lamb never got on well with Ryan.

Sinclair looks at him for a moment. "Not since I got stuck here, friend," he says slowly. "But I've been in touch with an acquaintance of hers, and he tells me that she's holed up near Fontaine Futuristics."

This explains the fact that Atlas never heard her on the radio - Fontaine Futuristics is well across the city, snugged up next to Persephone and the trench it hangs over. "That's where you're trying to go, then?"

"Sure am." He coughs into his shirt-cuff. "Now, sport, how much do you know about Rapture Central Computing?"

"Not much." And he never really cared about it, either - he had no use for the products that came out of Minerva's Den, not when he was trying to rouse the depressed underclass of Rapture to revolution. Some of the things that purportedly came from there might have been useful, but, well, it's all in the past now.

"Well, there was a fellow who used to work there by the name of Reed Wahl," Sinclair says. "Matter of fact, he ran the place, or at least he did until the war started." He chews the end of his cigar for a moment and continues.

"I picked up his frequency the other day and as luck would have it, seems like he's still kicking around in Minerva's Den. But here's the catch - the old fella's locked down the train station. And that's the only way to get to Fontaine Futuristics unless you fancy putting on a diving suit and draining Dionysus Park." Sinclair scratches an itch on the side of his neck. "Ol' Reed happens to owe me a couple favors from back when, so here's what I propose: you jumpstart that train car sitting out there, and in return I make sure that Mr. Wahl lets us pass on through when we get to his part of town. Sound fair?"

It _sounds_ like the only deal Atlas is likely to get. What makes him uneasy is that it's not clear what Sinclair gets out of the arrangement, other than a ride to Fontaine Futuristics. Maybe that's all he wants.

But if Rapture teaches nothing else, it teaches suspicion.

"It sure does," he says, and puts out his hand for a friendly shake. "How about we get a move on?"

* * *

Remember when I said that the next chapter wouldn't take so long? ha ha oh god I'm sorry

I've had most of this chapter finished since uh last year sometime, and I was starting to feel real bad about not updating in like forever so here you go!

Fun fact: "Some Of These Days" does not appear in either game; however, I heard Kathy Brier's rendition of it as I started work on this chapter and it seemed like a perfect fit, so I threw it in.

As always, thanks for reading.


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